Frank Laird on Peak Oil, Global Warming, and Policy Choice
April 16th, 2007Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Frank Laird, from the University of Denver and also a Center affiliate, has the lead article in our latest newsletter. His topic is peak oil, climate change, and policy choice. Here is an excerpt:
A recent spate of books and articles proclaim the end of oil and an imminent crisis for the world. Likewise, global warming alarms sound from almost every corner of the press. What are policy makers to do? How should policy analysts help decision makers frame the debate and assess the alternatives? Many advocates are trying to do exactly the wrong thing: narrow policy makers’ options through a rhetoric proclaiming that policy makers will have no choice but to adopt their favored technology, so the sooner they get to it, the better. This approach both misunderstands how policy making works and does a disservice to policy makers. . .
Ironically, both renewable and nuclear energy advocates see themselves as possessing the key to an energy-abundant and climate-safe future. Both advocacy communities have been around for decades, have a history of mutual hostility, and think their time is nigh. Yet both groups are using a language of inevitability that suggests a naïveté about public policy, short-changes the policy process, and makes it all the harder to have intelligent, nuanced discussions of the difficult policy choices that lie ahead.
Their central point is that society or governments will have “no choice” but to adopt their preferred solution. They believe that the problems of peak oil and climate change present such severe problems to our society that policy makers will realize that they must adopt nuclear or renewable energy, that the lack of choice will be plain.
This language distorts the reality of policy making and short-changes society by trying to close off debate over the many and possibly creative solutions that policy could bring to bear on these problems. The central fact of policy making is that governments always have a choice. No circumstance, no matter how dire, leaves them with only one choice. To be sure, not all choices are equally good, and anyone familiar with history will know that sometimes governments make bad, even disastrous, choices. But they always have choices to make. Pretending otherwise just misunderstands all we know about public policy.
Read the whole thing.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:00 am
“[T]he purpose of policy analysis is to open up alternatives for policy makers, not tell them the one best thing to do, much less try to persuade them that they only have one choice.”
This nugget too often gets lost in detailed technical discussions of the adequacy or inadequacy of forecasts about environmental resources or hazards. It’s great to see Laird set it forth so clearly and succinctly.
April 16th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
“Now is the time to expand our thinking about everything from diplomacy to economic and social development, as well as technological innovation.” Indeed, no one talks about the agencies that will effect the solutions. Global Warming abatement will require unprecedented international cooperation. In addition to the aspirations of developing nations, GW will produce nations/areas that will be winners or unaffected as well as the loosers. How do you get the first three to make sacrifices for the benefit of the latter?
April 16th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
“How do you get the first three to make sacrifices for the benefit of the latter? ”
You don’t. Is the rich west making any sacrifices now for the develope world?
April 16th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
>”Talking about inevitability also short-changes society because it is an effort to restrict the scope and creativity of policy making, shutting out competing voices and narrowing the scope of thinking about what are multi-dimensional problems.”
While responding to GW likely has a need for policy making, why do we need ‘policy makers’ help with peak oil (other than removing barriers they have erected against various other energy sources)?
Talking about _policy making_ also short-changes society because it is an effort to restrict the scope and creativity of the _free market_, shutting out competing voices and narrowing the scope of thinking about what are multi-dimensional problems.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:37 am
If market forces alone create a global rush towards nuclear energy, how will that technological fix affect the security of the world in the present ideological climate? Imagine thousands of new nuclear plants and their waste. Do we want everyone to reprocess spent fuel of which plutonium is a product? We also hear today about the Russian plan to build a floating nuclear facility. Such nuclear fixes seem to overwhelm the global cooperation we see in the world.
If we convert food sources to power our cars, how will that effect nutrition in the third world?
I think mitigation and adaptation require us to look at the big picture. This means debating the unintended consequences of action and inaction as well as ALL the threats to global stability. We read about bees dying from cell phone transmissions and over fishing depleting the ocean’s genetic stocks. Certainly numerous environmental degradations and threats are part of the big picture.
The author points out a “consensus”, but the basic science regarding the lag time between temperature and increases in CO2, the percentage of human forcing of CO2 v the amplification cycle started 5000 years ago and even the inevitability of another glacial period down the road are uncertain and leads us to consider making our policy very carefully adn in an framework that rests on verifiable global cooperation.
Just a thought from the public gallery…..